Islamist-leaning draft constitution divides Egypt

CAIRO The political crisis over Egypt's draft constitution hardened on both sides on Sunday, as President Mohammed Morsi prepared to deploy the army to safeguard balloting in a planned referendum on the new charter and his opponents called for more protests and a boycott to undermine the vote.

Thousands of demonstrators streamed toward the presidential palace for a fifth night of protests against Morsi and the proposed charter, and the president, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, formally issued an order asking the military to protect such “vital institutions” and to secure the vote.

With the decision to boycott the referendum, the opposition signaled it had given up hope that it could defeat the draft charter at the polls, and had opted to try to undermine the referendum's legitimacy.

The call for new protests – with major rallies expected at the presidential palace again on Tuesday and Friday – ensures that questions about Egypt's national unity and stability will continue to overshadow debate about the specific contents of the charter. Opponents say the proposed constitution, rushed through an assembly dominated by Islamist allies of the president, fails to adequately protect individual and minority rights and opens the door to greater religious influence over the state.

Over the past two weeks, hundreds of thousands of people have poured into the streets to oppose the charter, crowds have attacked 28 Muslim Brotherhood offices and the group's headquarters, and at least seven people have died in clashes between Islamist and secular political factions.

The opposition “rejects lending legitimacy to a referendum that will definitely lead to more sedition and division,” said Sameh Ashour, a spokesman for a coalition that calls itself the National Salvation Front. Holding a referendum “in a state of seething and chaos,” Ashour said, amounted to “a reckless and flagrant absence of responsibility, risking driving the country into violent confrontations that endanger its national security.”

Whether to ask voters to vote no or to stay home has been the subject of heated debate in opposition circles in the week since Morsi announced the referendum, to be held Saturday.

Now the question is whether opponents can translate the energy of the protests against the charter into more votes and seats in parliamentary elections that are expected to take place two months after the referendum.

Both sides acknowledge that Morsi has hurt himself and his party politically with the act that touched off the protests: a decree giving himself authoritarian powers and putting his decisions above the reach of judicial review until the charter is passed. He suffered even more, they say, when the backlash against the decree and the new constitution led to a night of clashes between his Islamist supporters and their more secular opponents that left at least six dead and hundreds more injured.

Morsi surprised his critics after midnight Saturday by withdrawing almost all the provisions of his decree, a step he said he took on the recommendation of about 40 politicians and thinkers he convened on Saturday for a “national dialogue” meant to resolve the crisis. Leading opposition figures were invited to take part, but nearly all declined; according to a list broadcast on state television, most of the attendees were Islamists of various stripes, and the only prominent secular politician on hand was the former presidential candidate Ayman Nour.

A spokesman for the group said at an authorized news conference that Morsi was issuing a new, more limited decree that would give immunity from judicial scrutiny only to “constitutional declarations,” a narrow, if hazily defined, category of actions. But Morsi did not concede to the opposition's main demand: to postpone the referendum long enough for an overhaul of the draft. Although international experts who have studied it say the document is hardly more religious or Islamist than Egypt's old constitution, liberals in Egypt say it contains insufficient safeguards against a future Islamist majority rolling back individual rights.

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